Meatless Monday: Three Sisters Stuffed Chiles

Three Sisters, the harmonious growing and eating of delicious corn, beans, and squash. It has developed into quite a lot of culinary applications, and at out house is loved stuffed into various foodstuffs. A favorite, green chiles. The three items compliment and complete each other, and taste amazing together.

You can use what ever type of beans and squash you like or have on hand, it's pretty versatile.

Begin with your chiles. (You can also use peppers if you wish!) You can slice in half lengthwise to fill, or cut off the stem end to fill. I go the stem end route.

After you have your chiles/peppers ready to go, lightly saute about a half-cup of diced onions in 2 tablespoons of butter. (Seems like a lot, but it won't be later...)

 While you do that, dice your squash. You'll want it at about 1/4 inch. We used zucchini here, because that's what looked good at the grocer this week. It was a medium sized squash that gave us about a cup diced.

When your onion is ready, turn off the heat, add your squash and stir. It will use up the rest of the butter and sliiiiiightly cook.

In a bowl, combine one cup of frozen or fresh corn, and a cup and a half of beans. (Canned or home-cooked...) We used black beans here. Mix in your onion/zucchini mixture. Add to that a tablespoon of lime juice, a teaspoon of cumin, and salt to taste. I also added a half-cup of shredded cheese to help slightly bind it. This will still be a very loose stuffing.

Begin stuffing into your chiles/peppers. If you are using the chiles and stuffing from the top, make the first couple spoonfuls very loose, and kind of wiggle the goodies down to the pointed end. If halved, you'll just need to spoon it on. Arrange in a pan and preheat your oven to 400.

Bake for about 20-25 minutes, sprinkle with more cheese if desired, and let it go another 15 minutes or so.

We like to serve them with tortillas to help get the lose filling and cheesiness to our mouths.

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Some Great Deals This Week

I love it when I get a great deal without the hassle of coupons. (Although it IS a hassle well worth it!)

Just this week at Target, there were several brands offering a $5.00 Target gift-card when you bought three of the participating products. (& you could mix & match!) So, with a little planning, to ring up each deal separately so I could use the gift-cards right away, the cost I figured for my products was really good.

First up, Suave dry shampoos were only $2.99. Three of those is 8.97, but subtract the $5 I got back at a gift card & they were less than $1.33 each!

Then I mixed up the second batch, a lotion my son loves, but still has back-up (thank you couponing.) and a couple more for us to try out. (Someone always ends up using them...) The Vaseline lotion (Son's favorite) was $2.99, as was the Moroccan Infusion Suave lotion, and the other Suave lotion was $2.59. That made my pre-deal price $8.57. Minus the $5 gift-card earned, a great $1.19 each!


Now, I also had a great score with coupons. I luckily had some promotional coupons for $4 off two bags of Starbucks coffee. I wasn't very big on Starbucks because of the price, so I was hunting for deals after receiving some very tasty coffee from them through Bzzagent. This deal just fell in our laps, my friend saw it while we were walking by an endcap at Dillons. She always finds the greatest things, that's why I share my coupons with her!

Yes, that is SIX delicious bags of Starbucks coffee. Total retail cost (at this store) is $56.94! They were already on sale for $6.99 each... so the total of $41.94 is still pretty good. They ALSO had a deal that you'd get $3.00 off if you bought three. So, of course I had to buy six. $35.94 is still a great price, but I also pulled out 3 of my $4.00/2 coupons. (all I had left after giving some away) So my grand total was $23.94. Or a whopping $3.99 each! Far less than half of retail!

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Another Great Score at Dollar General

Popped into Dollar General today to grab a few things and of course I had to scan the clearance areas. My waiting patiently for the Valentines goods to go from 75% to 90% off paid out and I grabbed a few boxes of Valentines for school next year....and the year after, for a whopping $.10 each. They never dipped that low last year, but I was hopeful because the new management this year has been GREAT with sales and clearances.

BUT, on the other side of the store is where I really lucked out. Our store still had some bath & body gift sets left from Christmas, that up until now were just sitting on the shelves. Already at $10 each, for $12-16 worth of product, it is sometimes a good deal if you're just looking for a little discount. However today, when I passed them they had a clearance sign up! 75% off! I knew these would be gone TODAY, so I grabbed a few I know that our house would use, or that I could put up for gifts- while still not going overboard and breaking out of this months tiny budget.

For $3.00 each I got:

• Two Suave Moroccan Infusion collections with products I've been eyeing lately. They each have a 12.6 oz Shine Shampoo, conditioner, an 8 oz deep conditioning mask, and a 3 oz shine styling oil. PLUS- a coupon for $1.00 off the skin care items of this line! 
• Two Old Spice"Action Pack"s. They each have 1 18 oz body wash, 1 sample-size (1.7 oz) of another scent of body wash, 1 full-size deodorant, 1 trial-sized deodorant (same scent as the trial wash), and one full-sized (4oz) body spray. This one also had a coupon. 
• One Dove set with a 24 oz deep moisture body wash, a 12 oz shampoo, a beauty bar, and a little body-poof. No coupon, but that body wash is HUGE. 

I also grabbed a little make-up kit for The Princess for $1.50, and a Calgon set that I don't know what I'm doing with yet. It has a body wash (4 oz), a little 2 oz body spray, a poofy and 3.5 oz of bath salts for $1.50 Not too shabby. 

SO, it may totally be worth checking out if your local Dollar General has these items on clearance. Quickly, before they're all snagged up! 

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